


The People Under The Stairs

by lovely_laurent



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Horror, M/M, Psychological Horror
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-22
Updated: 2017-10-26
Packaged: 2019-01-21 11:15:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12456524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovely_laurent/pseuds/lovely_laurent
Summary: When Merlin and Will plan to steal valuables from Uther Pendragon, they uncover Uther's dirty secret, and Merlin gets caught in a wicked game of cat-and-mouse as he tries to save Arthur from his father -- all while trying to survive, himself. (Based on the Wes Craven movie)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> thought i'd do something a little darker for halloween <3 plus I love horror movies, but never ever get to horror-inspired fics.

Merlin arrived back at his flat building late in the afternoon. His legs felt heavy underneath him, as though they would collapse at any given second. His thoughts were sluggish and weak, a simple thought causing strain. He was exhausted. His whole body ached of a long day.

And yet, there was little relief when he returned home. People hung out in the hallways, leaning upon dingy wallpaper-clad walls and kicking their feet into once-white, now-brown carpet. Merlin walked past it all, and to his own flat on the second floor.

Hunith waited for him at the dining table, fumbling through various bills and bank statements. When Merlin came through the door, she quickly set them down and met him in the foyer.

The apartment was dark, light casting an orange glare on the yellowing wallpaper. The ceiling was brown with water stains, and the carpet was grey with grime and muck from decades of being walked on. No matter how many times Hunith tried to go over the carpet, no matter what method of cleaning she tried, it never got rid of the stain. 

“Merlin,” she cooed, “Welcome home, dear. How was work?”

He sighed and rubbed at his face. “Long.”

Hunith guided him back into the kitchen to take a seat at the table. She pursed her lips and looked away from his as he sat down, back at the bills with worry in her eyes. “I was just thumbing through the mail,” she said, and with a sigh let her head fall in her hands. “Merlin, I’ll be honest, I don’t know how we’re going to afford this.”

Merlin looked through them, feeling even more tired and stressed. He had no idea either. His mother’s hospital bills had just come in, and he could already barely afford rent for this dump. He already had two jobs, and the idea of a third made his hands clench and his heart thump anxiously. His mother couldn’t work while she was recovering from surgery, but he desperately wished she could. If she could just pick up a few extra shifts at the convenient store.

Not that he’d ever tell her that. The last thing he wanted was to make her feel guilty.

\--

Will slung an arm around Merlin’s shoulders. “I got a plan, mate,” he said, pulling his friend in close. “A great plan. One that will pay your mother’s hospital bills and your rent for six months.”

Merlin perked up, but quickly covered his enthusiasm with scrutiny. “What kind of plan?”

“I heard,” Will started, “That Mr. Pendragon has a valuable set of gold coins.”

“Our landlord?”

“The very same.” Will took his arm away and instead took out his phone to pull up a news article. Merlin skimmed through it, reading about how there was an auction, and an antique set of gold coins sold for thousands of dollars to Uther Pendragon.

He digested this information. It was hard to swallow, like a giant multivitamin, chalky and caught in his throat. “What would we have to do?”

“Steal them,” he said, tapping on the phone screen.

Merlin tried to swallow the imaginary pill, but found himself choking on it. Still, he needed the money. He needed to pay the hospital bills, while he still had a roof over his head.

He sighed. “Alright. But if we get caught, I’m never forgiving you.”

Will laughed and shook hands with him. “It’s a deal. But we won’t get caught. I have this whole thing planned out. You’re going to sell scout cookies, and when you knock on their door, you’ll scope out the area for any security cameras.”

“Scout cookies?”

“Isn’t it genius?”

“I don’t think anyone’s going to buy that I’m a scout.”

“I have a girl who’s willing to play the role of your niece. All she asked for was a fiver! Can you believe it?”

“No. Who on earth is going to let you borrow their daughter to steal?”

“Just let me worry about that, yeah?”

Merlin gave in, and let him worry about that by himself.

Overnight, he tried to rationalize stealing, rationalize taking things that didn’t belong to him, all to benefit himself. It was surprisingly easy. More than anything, it was easy to tell himself that he deserved it, and Mr. Pendragon didn’t. It was so easy to convince himself that Mr. Pendragon was a horrible landlord. After all, it was  _ him  _ who refused to fix the heat in the middle of winter. It was  _ him  _ who neglected to fix the plumbing after weeks of complaints from various tenants. It was  _ him  _ who ran that shithole, and refused to do anything about it.

And now Merlin was drowning in bills, and it was even easier for him to convince himself that it was Mr. Pendragon’s fault.

Will met Merlin after another long, tedious work day. Just like before, his body ached and tensed after standing for eight hours straight, and his thoughts snailed to keep up with everything going on around him.

But Will, he was perky as ever. Merlin thought he must get some rush from the prospect of breaking the law. He was always getting himself into trouble.

Merlin piled into his van, sitting on ripped up cushions and listening to cassette tapes on the radio. It was all Will could afford, and Merlin didn’t even own a car. He barely owned a bicycle.

“Where’s my niece?” Merlin asked, slumping down his messenger bag in the section between the seats.

“Sick. So you’re going solo, mate.”

“Solo?” Merlin was petrified. All that rationalizing he did was suddenly gone, and he didn’t think he could do it. “What if he actually wants to buy some of this shit?”

Will rolled his eyes and reached back to grab an ordering sheet, clad with logos of local scout groups. “Just fill out one of these. But I doubt he’s going to buy anything. My dad talked to him once, said he called the scouts a bunch of liberal fascists.”

“How nice,” Merlin said, voice thick with sarcasm.

“So my point is,” Will continued, poking Merlin with his his finger as he drove. “He isn’t going to buy any of that shit. It’s just so you can check for any security cameras. It would look suspicious if you just went nosing around his property.”

“A grown man trying to sell scout cookies is already suspicious, don’t you think?”

“Frankly? No.”

\--

The Pendragon house was a dark blue victorian, complete with turret and brick porch. All the windows had bars on them, aside from the stained glass window at the attic. It made Merlin wonder what on earth they were trying to keep out. He glanced over at Will, and thought for sure that he was trying to keep out men like him.

The house gave him a bad feeling. It crept in his gut like a stomach ache, telling his nerves to run and never look back. To ditch Will and do the right thing. He could find some other way to pay the bills. Get a third job, ask his mother to shorten her medical leave. So long as he did not go inside.

But then Will was smacking his arm, snapping him out of his thoughts. “Well, pal? Get out there and do your stuff.”

It was too late to skip out.


	2. Chapter 2

Merlin knocked on the door and waited. He couldn’t help but glance back, three houses down to where Will was parked. He looked back down to the order form in his hand, and thought,  _ what the hell am I doing? _ And for a second, he had forgotten. But then the remembrance washed over him, and he suddenly felt that wave of guilt wash over him with it.

He scanned the area for security cameras, straightening up as if he were already being watched.

He saw no sign of any.

Instead, he heard various clicks and locks sliding, which painted a very vivid mental image of several locks and chains on the other side of the door. It made him think back to the metal bars on the window, and how it was exactly men like Will -- and now, men like Merlin, apparently -- that he wanted to keep out.

The door opened, and an older man with greying hair answered the door. He gave Merlin a stern, questioning gaze, eyebrow perked up as if to ask, “Well?”

It made Merlin stumble over his words. “U-um, hi, I’m helping my niece sell scout cookies?” he said, more a question than anything. While he spoke, he tried his best to peak in the door, trying to get a look for any other way inside. He did see a backdoor, and no security systems. “I was curious as to whether or not you’d like to buy any.”

Uther lowered his head, looking at Merlin -- looking  _ through  _ Merlin. “You’re selling cookies...for your niece?” he asked, voice thick with suspicion.

Merlin’s eyes widened under his scrutiny. “Yes, she’s a scout.”

“What’s her troop number?”

Fuck.

“Two-oh-two,” Merlin lied. He was surprised by how easy it was to lie to Uther, how easy it was to make shit up off the top of his head. It reminded him of how easy to was to convince himself that Uther was worth stealing from, that he somehow was less worthy than Merlin and Will.

“I see…” Uther lowered his gaze for a moment, before looking back up at Merlin. “No. I don’t believe in their political statements.”

And with that, the door was slammed in his face, and Merlin could hear the click and slide of the locks locking back in place.

Merlin returned to Will’s van with a scowl on his face. He crawled back in and onto the ripped vinyl seat. “Well,” he said, “You were right. He didn’t want any damn scout cookies.”

“I told you so. But what about cameras? Security systems? Locks?”

“No cameras, but the door’s completely locked, though. It looked like there was a back door, though, with just a chain lock.”

“Sweet!” Will clapped Merlin on the shoulder roughly, causing him to jerk forward. “Now we just wait until he leaves the house, and then we break in.”

It didn’t take long. In fact, it took merely half an hour or so before Uther was pulling out of his driveway and leaving the house. Will quickly hopped out of the van, but Merlin was more hesitant, moving much slower.

“Are you sure he lives alone?” he asked.

Will turned around with a scoff. “I’m sure. Have you ever seen the old man with anyone else?”

No, he hadn’t, but Merlin barely saw Uther to begin with.

As it turns out, breaking in was much easier than Merlin had expected. Will did most of the work, breaking the lock so they could get in.

The house was even more grand inside than out. The backdoor led into a kitchen, which was modern and sleek. It made Merlin furious. He could afford a fully upgraded kitchen, while making money off Merlin, who could barely afford a microwave. It made him sick.

“Where would the coins even be?” he asked Will, who quietly shut the door behind him.

“I don’t know, that’s why we have to look.”

The two looked tirelessly downstairs, trying their hardest to put everything back that they had moved. Merlin looked in vases, picking them up as gently as possible, and setting it down even more gently. Will, on the other hand, looked underneath everything. Underneath the couches and chairs, underneath the TV stand, underneath tables....

Eventually, the whole thing started to feel hopeless. Merlin groaned and threw himself on the sofa. “This is stupid,” he told Will, “We don’t even know if he kept them.”

“He kept them,” he said back, peaking underneath Merlin. “He must’ve kept them in a safe or something. Let’s go upstairs.”

Before Merlin could agree, the back door was unlocking and opening slowly. He looked to Will with worry on his face, and will looked back, clearly having forgotten his plan. He mouthed to Merlin, “Go, go!” and the two hurried down into the basement as quietly as they could manage.

\--

Uther could tell that things were not as they were supposed to be. He knew the second he walked in the door, that things were wrong.

For starters, things were in the wrong place. The vase in the parlor -- his favorite -- was exactly three centimeters to the left. Surely, Uther had left it three centimeters to the right.

Secondly, things  _ smelled  _ off. It smelled like cheap cologne and the wrong brand of deodorant. Not at all the stuff Uther wore, and not anything he kept in the house.

He went upstairs to grab his gun from the bedroom. It was a shotgun his father had given to him when he was a young boy, and one he kept close in case he had any intruders.

\--

It was dark down in the basement, but the distinct sound of rustling could be heard over the noise of machinery and household appliances.

Merlin looked at Will, who looked around in the darkness. “What now?” he hissed out in a whisper. “We’re going to get caught, and I’m going to get arrested, and  _ then  _ who’s going to pay my mother’s bills?”

Will punched him on the arm. “Just relax. We’ll get out of here, we just have to sneak out.”

Merlin looked around in the basement, and quickly realized they weren’t alone.

Underneath the stairs, Merlin could see a man and a woman, looking up at him with wide eyes. Both looked unkempt, dirty even, with hair sticking up in every direction and curling from weeks of not showering. Clothes, once frilly and nice, were not tattered and frayed, and yellowing from unwash. They were unbelievably pale, as though they hadn’t seen sunlight in years.

Merlin sucked in a breath and reached out for Will, who turned to see what he saw.

“Oh shit,” he said.

Merlin repeated, “Oh shit.”


End file.
